History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, and Life of Chauncey Jerome eBook

Chauncey Jerome
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 117 pages of information about History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, and Life of Chauncey Jerome.

History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, and Life of Chauncey Jerome eBook

Chauncey Jerome
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 117 pages of information about History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, and Life of Chauncey Jerome.
do, in nine cases out of ten, he will hate and injure you in the end.  This has been my experience.  Many years ago, I hired two men from a neighboring town to work for me.  It was about the time that I invented the Bronze Looking-Glass Clock, which was, at that time, decidedly the best kind made.  After a while these two men contrived a plan to get up a company, go into another town, and manufacture the same kind of clock.  This company was formed about six months before I found it out, and much of their time was spent in making small tools and clock-parts to take with them.  This was done when they were at work for me on wages.  They induced as many of my men as they could to go with them, and took some of them into company.  When they had finished some clocks, they went round to my customers and under-sold me to get the trade.  This is the first chapter.  When I invented the thirty-hour brass clock in 1838, one of these men had returned to Bristol again, and was out of business; but he had some money which he had made out of my former improvements.  I had lost a great deal of money in the great panic of 1837.  After I had started a little in making this new clock, he proposed to put in some money and become interested with me, and as I was in want of funds to carry on the business, I told him that if he would put in three thousand dollars, he should have a share of the profits.  I went on with him one year, but got sick of it and bought him out.  I had to pay six thousand dollars to get rid of him.  He took this money, went to a neighboring town, bought an old wood clock factory, fitted it up for making the same clock that I had just got well introduced, and induced several of my workmen to go with him, some of whom he took in company with him.  As soon as I had the clock business well a going in England, he sent over two men to sell the same patterns.  He has kept this up ever since, and has made a great deal of money.

After the failure of the Jerome Manufacturing Company, as I have already stated, I went to Waterbury to assist the Benedict & Burnham Company.  After I had been there six or eight months, and had got the case-making well started, (my brother, Noble Jerome, had got the movements in the works the year before.) this same man I have been speaking about, came to me and made me a first-rate offer to go with him into a town a short distance from Waterbury, and make clocks there.  I accepted his offer, but should not have done so, had it not been for the depressed condition to which I had been brought by previous events.  I accordingly moved to the town where he had hired a factory.  He was carrying on the business at the same time in his old factory, and came to this new place about twice a week.  My work was in the third story, and it was very hard for an old man to go up and down a dozen times a day.  About this time I obtained a patent on a new clock case, and as I was to be interested in the business, I let the Company make several thousand

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History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, and Life of Chauncey Jerome from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.